The sumptuous music of Sergei Mikhailovich Lyapunov may come as a surprise in the West, where he is a well-kept secret. An unashamedly romantic composer to the end, he belonged to the half-generation between Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov and died in 1924, by which time The Rite of Spring, dodecaphony, jazz and neoclassicism had arrived.
He was born in Yaroslavl, one hundred and sixty miles north east of Moscow. In 1878, invited by its director Nikolai Rubinstein, he entered the Moscow Conservatory, where his teachers included Tchaikovsky. A brilliant student, he graduated in 1883, but the following year he went to St. Petersburg, the home of the Russian nationalist school of composers, becoming not only the favourite disciple of its leading light, Balakirev, but his devoted friend, collaborator and supporter for the last quarter-century of his life when the older man's difficult personality led to considerable alienation from his fellows. He motivated Balakirev to return to composition and completed and transcribed some of his works. For many years after 1894 Lyapunov held a number of important posts in St. Petersburg and while making his name as a composer also fulfilled engagements internationally as both solo concert pianist and conductor.
Originally briefly available on Olympia, this disc forms the fourth volume in a series exploring Russian Piano Music.
Described by The New York Times as “a man whose nature was designed with pianos in mind”, Anthony Goldstone is one of Britain’s most respected pianists. A sixth-generation pupil of Beethoven through his great teacher Maria Curcio, Anthony Goldstone was born in Liverpool. He studied with Derrick Wyndham at the Royal Manchester College of Music (which later honoured him with a Fellowship), later with Curcio in London.
He has enjoyed a career encompassing six continents, the Last Night of the Proms, very many broadcasts and nearly seventy CDs. He has an adventurous approach to repertoire and has been praised by Vienna's Die Presse for “his astonishingly profound spiritual penetration”. In the last few years Goldstone has become known for his acclaimed completions and realisations of works for solo piano and piano duet by Schubert, and for two pianos and solo piano by Mozart, all of which he has recorded on Divine Art CDs.
